Trivia: One of the world's most popular singers, an award-winning, versatile actress of stage, feature film, and television, a distinguished filmmaker, and a major producer, Barbra Streisand reigns as the grande dame of American entertainment. Born on April 24th, 1942, Streisand was raised in a middle-class Brooklyn household, the daughter of a high school teacher father who died when Streisand was a baby, and a mother who dreamed of the stage, she graduated from high school two years ahead of her classmates. As a young woman, Streisand attended acting classes and worked various odd jobs and in nightclubs, until she won a Greenwich Village talent contest. She landed her first major acting job in the 1962 Broadway musical I Can Get It for Your Wholesale and stole the show with her portrayal of frowsy secretary Miss Marmelstein. The 21-year-old subsequently debuted on Judy Garland's television show, opposite Garland's daughter Liza Minnelli and Broadway institution Ethel Merman. Streisand's powerful, clear soprano, charisma, and unusual looks made her the perfect choice in Jule Styne's and Bob Merrill's musical Funny Girl in 1964. Essaying the life of another great performer, comedienne/singer/actress Fanny Brice, the young performer became the hottest actress on the Great White Way and a bona fide star, after a highly rated television special, My Name Is Barbra (1965), for which she received two Emmy awards. Streisand's Oscar-winning performance in the film version of Funny Girl assured her a prominent place in the Hollywood heavens. As previously mentioned, the plain-looking Streisand seemed an unlikely candidate for movie stardom, but as her character Fanny blossomed onscreen from an awkward girl from a poor Jewish neighborhood to a self-assured national star, so did Streisand successfully grow to possess a certain womanly loveliness, although hers has always been an interesting rather than a classical beauty. In 1969, she played the irrepressible Dolly Levi in the film version of Jerry Herman's smash hit musical Hello Dolly! (1969). Superficially, Streisand was too young to play the middle-aged matchmaker, but with her strong comedic abilities and powerful voice, she carried the role off with aplomb. Unfortunately, the film didn't click with audiences and neither did her third film, the romantic musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970). In film, she had greater success when she starred opposite George Segal in the romantic comedy The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) and Ryan O'Neal in Peter Bogdonavich's classic screwball comedy What's Up Doc? (1972). The latter was a huge success and led to a far less successful re-pairing with O'Neal in The Main Event (1979). In 1972, Streisand showed her dramatic side in the complex story of a troubled housewife, Up the Sandbox, following it with the smash hit romantic melodrama, The Way We Were (1973), in which Streisand starred opposite another 1970s icon, Robert Redford. The film was named one of the year's top ten by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures and the title song, written by Marvin Hamlisch, provided Streisand with a major hit and earned Hamlisch an Oscar for Best Song. In 1975, Streisand reprised the role of Fanny Brice in Funny Lady, an uneven chronicle of Brice's later years that had far fewer sparkling moments than the original, but still produced a memorable soundtrack, filled with classic Billy Rose songs. Streisand, who for years had been controlling almost every aspect of her recordings, decided to take the reigns as an executive producer for her 1976 remake and update of A Star Is Born. Co-starring Kris Kristofferson and sparing no expense, the musical drama received decidedly mixed reviews; the subsequent soundtrack album was a much bigger hit. In 1983, Streisand caused a controversy when she announced that she would direct, produce, write, and star in her own feature, Yentl. The brouhaha centered around the notoriously egotistical 40-year-old Streisand's plan to play a teenage girl who masquerades as a Yeshiva student and it would also be a musical. The actress struggled valiantly to pull off the difficult task, audiences were not impressed, and the film was widely panned. Once again, however, the soundtrack provided her with another hit. Still, she would not make another movie until 1987, when she produced and starred in the self-indulgent Nuts. As with her previous few films, she also penned the soundtrack. In 1991, she had her first hit movie in a decade, directing, producing, and starring in a tragic drama opposite Nick Nolte, Prince of Tides. She followed it up in 1996 with the touching comedy-drama The Mirror Has Two Faces. Streisand then took a break from appearing before the camera until 2004's sequel to Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers. She and Dustin Hoffman shared the screen as a pair of touchy-feely retirees and the two were noted for their chemistry and seemingly genuine enjoyment of their screwball antics. She reprised her role in another sequel, Little Fockers, in 2010. Streisand later took a starring role opposite Seth Rogen in The Guilt Trip (2012).Even during her break from on-camera work, Streisand continued her involvement behind the scenes, spending the first years of the 21st century extensively exploring the medium of television. She served as executive producer for such TV projects as The Long Island Incident, Frankie & Hazel, What Makes A Family, and Varian's War.Streisand's successes as a singer include 38 albums, 30 charting singles, and seven Grammys, one of which is a special Legend award. Throughout her career, her romantic travails have provided fans with hours of entertainment. Early in her career, a marriage to actor Elliot Gould produced son Jason Gould, who has also become an actor. During the 1970s, Streisand had a tempestuous, long-term relationship with hairdresser turned producer Jon Peters. In the late '90s, she quietly married longtime beau, actor James Brolin.

Trivia: Born August 18th, 1937, the rugged, dashingly handsome Robert Redford was among the biggest movie stars of the 1970s. While an increasingly rare onscreen presence in subsequent years, he remained a powerful motion-picture industry force as an Academy Award-winning director as well as a highly visible champion of American independent filmmaking. Born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on August 18, 1937, in Santa Monica, CA, he attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship. After spending a year as an oil worker, he traveled to Europe, living the painter's life in Paris. Upon returning to the U.S., Redford settled in New York City to pursue an acting career and in 1959 made his Broadway debut with a small role in Tall Story. Bigger and better parts in productions including The Highest Tree, Little Moon of Alban, and Sunday in New York followed, along with a number of television appearances, and in 1962 he made his film debut in Terry and Dennis Sanders' antiwar drama War Hunt. However, it was a leading role in the 1963 Broadway production of Barefoot in the Park which launched Redford to prominence and opened the door to Hollywood, where in 1965 he starred in back-to-back productions of Situation Serious but Not Hopeless and Inside Daisy Clover. A year later he returned in The Chase and This Property Is Condemned, but like his previous films they were both box-office failures. Offered a role in Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Redford rejected it and then spent a number of months relaxing in Spain. His return to Hollywood was met with an offer to co-star with Jane Fonda in a film adaptation of Barefoot in the Park, released in 1967 to good reviews and even better audience response. However, Redford then passed on both The Graduate and Rosemary's Baby to star in a Western titled Blue. Just one week prior to shooting, he backed out of the project, resulting in a series of lawsuits and a long period of inactivity; with just one hit to his credit and a history of questionable career choices, he was considered a risky proposition by many producers. Then, in 1969, he and Paul Newman co-starred as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a massively successful revisionist Western which poised Redford on the brink of superstardom. However, its follow-ups -- 1969's Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here and The Downhill Racer -- both failed to connect, and after the subsequent failures of 1971's Fauss and Big Halsey and 1972's The Hot Rock, many industry observers were ready to write him off. Both 1972's The Candidate and Jeremiah Johnson fared markedly better, though, and with Sydney Pollack's 1973 romantic melodrama The Way We Were, co-starring Barbra Streisand, Redford's golden-boy lustre was restored. That same year he reunited with Newman and their Butch Cassidy director George Roy Hill for The Sting, a Depression-era caper film which garnered seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture honors. Combined with its impressive financial showing, it solidified Redford's new megastar stature, and he was voted Hollywood's top box-office draw. Redford's next project cast him in the title role of director Jack Clayton's 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby; he also stayed in the film's 1920s milieu for his subsequent effort, 1975's The Great Waldo Pepper. Later that same year he starred in the thriller Three Days of the Condor before portraying Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in 1976's All the President's Men, Alan J. Pakula's masterful dramatization of the investigation into the Watergate burglary. In addition to delivering one of his strongest performances to date in the film, Redford also served as producer after first buying the rights to Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book of the same name. The 1977 A Bridge Too Far followed before Redford took a two-year hiatus from the screen. He didn't resurface until 1979's The Electric Horseman, followed a year later by Brubaker. Also in 1980 he made his directorial debut with the family drama Ordinary People, which won four Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor (for Timothy Hutton). By now, Redford's interest in acting was clearly waning; he walked out of The Verdict (a role then filled by Newman) and did not appear before the camera again for four years. When he finally returned in 1984's The Natural, however, it was to the usual rapturous public reception, and with 1985's Out of Africa he and co-star Meryl Streep were the focal points in a film which netted eight Oscars, including Best Picture. The 1986 film Legal Eagles, on the other hand, was both a commercial and critical stiff, and in its wake Redford returned to the director's chair with 1988's The Milagro Beanfield War. Apart from narrating the 1989 documentary To Protect Mother Earth -- one of many environmental activities to which his name has been attached -- Redford was again absent from the screen for several years before returning in 1990's Havana. The star-studded Sneakers followed in 1992, but his most significant effort that year was his third directorial effort, the acclaimed A River Runs Through It. In 1993 Redford scored his biggest box-office hit in some time with the much-discussed Indecent Proposal. He followed in 1994 with Quiz Show, a pointed examination of the TV game-show scandals of the 1950s which many critics considered his most accomplished directorial turn to date. After the 1996 romantic drama Up Close and Personal, he began work on his adaptation of Nicholas Evans' hit novel The Horse Whisperer. The filmmaker was back behind the camera in 2000 as the director and producer of The Legend of Bagger Vance. The film's sentimental mixture of fantasy and inspiration scored with audiences, and Redford next turned back to acting with roles in The Last Castle and Spy Game the following year. Though Castle garnered only a lukewarm response from audiences and critics alike, fans were nevertheless primed to see the seasoned actor share the screen with his A River Runs Through It star Brad Pitt in the eagerly anticipated Spy Game. 2004 brought with it a starring role for Redford, alongside Helen Mirren and Willem Dafoe, in The Clearing; he played a kidnapping victim dragged into the woods at gunpoint. The film drew a mixed response; some reviewers praised it as brilliant, while others felt it only average. In 2005, Redford co-starred with Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez in the Lasse Hallstrom-directed An Unfinished Life. In addition to his acting and directing work, Redford has also flexed his movie industry muscle as the founder of the Sundance Institute, an organization primarily devoted to promoting American independent filmmaking. By the early '90s, the annual Sundance Film Festival, held in the tiny community of Park City, Utah, had emerged as one of the key international festivals, with a reputation as a major launching pad for young talent. An outgrowth of its success was cable's Sundance Channel, a network similarly devoted to promoting and airing indie fare; Redford also planned a circuit of art house theaters bearing the Sundance name.

Trivia: Yale graduate Bradford Dillman began his career in the sort of misunderstood-youth roles that had previously been the province of Montgomery Clift and James Dean. His first significant stage success was as the younger son in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Eugene O'Neill play Long Day's Journey Into Night. Signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1958, Dillman at first played standard leading men; his subtle shift to villainy occurred after he was cast as a wealthy psychopath in Compulsion, the 1959 drama based on the Leopold-Loeb case. Compulsion won Dillman an award at the Cannes Film Festival, and also threatened to typecast him for the rest of his film career, notwithstanding his leading role in Fox's Francis of Assisi (1961). It was during his Fox years that Dillman married popular cover girl Suzy Parker. Bradford Dillman has remained much in demand as a television guest star, and in 1965 was the lead on the filmed-in-Britain TV drama series Court-Martial.

Trivia: A former top model who went on to utilize her smoldering sensuality as Bond girl Holly Goodhead in 1979's Moonraker, actress Lois Chiles crafted a successful onscreen career with roles in such acclaimed indies as Diary of a Hit Man (1991) and Curdled (1996). A native of Alice, TX, who graduated from the University of Texas in 1969, Chiles was discovered by a Glamour magazine photographer while attending Finch College and soon found herself whisked into the world of high fashion. After conquering catwalks and haute couture, the model made her cinematic debut in the racially charged drama Together for Days (1972). She subsequently landed high-profile roles in The Way We Were (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), and Coma (1978), but it was her role of the suggestively named NASA scientist (and, of course, James Bond love interest) in Moonraker that truly got the attention of audiences. Although Chiles had originally been offered a role in the Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, she had turned it down while taking some time off from the silver screen. Following a chance meeting with The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker director Lewis Gilbert on a plane, Chiles was convinced to return to the screen for another opportunity. That was only the beginning of her lucrative film career, and following a healthy run on the popular television drama Dallas, Chiles returned to film work with supporting roles in Creepshow 2 and Broadcast News (both 1987). Although she never attained leading-lady status, Chiles remained a successful fixture of independent film throughout the 1990s, even appearing in such A-list releases as Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and Speed 2: Cruise Control (both 1997). Chiles remained active onscreen in the early 2000s, and was frequently seen in numerous made-for-TV movies, including Warning: Parental Advisory and Sudden Fear (both 2002).

Trivia: Patrick O'Neal made his first stage appearance in 1944 in his home state of Florida. While still a teenager, O'Neal was assigned to direct Signal Corps training shorts. Following his training at the Actors Studio and Neighborhood Playhouse, O'Neal entered the virgin territory of live TV, making appearances on such early anthologies as Gruen Playhouse. He played the romantic lead in his first film, 1954's The Mad Magician, thereafter settling into stuffed-shirt or villainous roles. It was fun to watch the usually reserved O'Neal make a meal of a mad-killer part obviously intended for Vincent Price in Chamber of Horrors (1966). It was also amusing to watch him bring a reluctant, droopy-eyed approach to the silly secret agentry of the 1967 spy spoof Matchless (1967). After appearing with Doris Day in Where Were You When the Lights Went Out (1966), O'Neal essayed the occasional role of dashing foreign correspondent on TV's The Doris Day Show (1968-73). Additional television assignments for O'Neal included his co-starring stint with Hazel Court in the 1957 comedy-melodrama series Dick and the Duchess (1957), the top-billed role of pathologist Daniel Coffee in the impressively produced videotaped medical series Diagnosis Unknown (1960), the straight-laced supporting role of lawyer Samuel Bennett in Kaz (1978) and the JR-type part of evil businessman Harlan Adams during the first (1983-84) season of Emerald Point NAS (Robert Vaughn took over the role in 1980). Making his Broadway debut in 1961, O'Neal appeared opposite Bette Davis the following year in his favorite part, the discredited, debauched Reverend Shannon in Tennessee Williams' Night of the Iguana. Going public by admitting his alcoholism in the 1970s, O'Neal appeared in a number of public-service announcements on behalf of AA; he also provided voiceovers for innumerable commercial products. When not performing, Patrick O'Neal pursued a successful second career as a restaurateur.

Trivia: Though of the same era as her Swedish compatriots Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman, talented and beautiful leading lady of stage and screen Viveca Lindfors never achieved their superstar status due in large part to working in movies that inadequately displayed the full extent of her ability and charismatic personality. Still, she earned accolades and awards from critics and film societies around the world, including two awards from the prestigious Berlin Film Festival. Born Elsa Viveca Torstensdotter Lindfors in Uppsala, Sweden, she learned to act at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm. She made her Swedish film debut in Snurriga Familjen (1940). For the next six years, she would appear in more films and establish a stage career. Moving to Hollywood in 1946, she contracted herself to Warner Bros. studios and two years later starred opposite Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Don Juan (1948); however, in 1947, she appeared in Night Unto Night, Ronald Reagan's first starring role, but the film was not released until 1949. The following year, she debuted in her first French film, Singoalla. She made her first Broadway appearance playing the lead in Anastasia. Other memorable stage roles include Miss Julie (1955), Brecht on Brecht (1961), and I Am Woman (1973), a one-woman show. For her filmwork, Lindfors won her first Best Actress Award from the BFF in 1951 for Die Vier im Jeep (Four in a Jeep). Her second BFF Best Actress Award was for her role in Huis Clos (No Exit) (1962). In her personal life, Lindfors was renowned for her numerous romantic liaisons -- this in a decade when such behavior was considered shocking. She claims to have married the first of her four husbands just to prove that a promiscuous woman could indeed marry a decent man. Unlike many actresses for whom the aging process marks the death of their careers, Lindfors grew gracefully into her latter years, gaining a dignified beauty and an even more commanding presence in such films as Welcome to L.A. and Robert Altman's A Wedding (1978). In 1985, she made her debut as a screenwriter and director with Unfinished Business. Lindfors made her final film appearance in Henry Jaglom's Last Summer in the Hamptons (1995). She died in October that year of complications from rheumatoid arthritis in her home town of Uppsala.

Trivia: Gamine-like Canadian singer-dancer Allyn Ann McLerie built her reputation on Broadway, where she made her debut at 16 in the chorus of One Touch of Venus. She rose to stardom playing soubrette roles in such hits as Leonard Bernstein's On the Town and Irving Berlin's Miss Liberty Four years after her tentative movie debut in the 1948 MGM feature Words and Music Ms. McLerie won a Warner Bros. contract when she repeated her Broadway role of Amy Spettigue in the film version of Frank Loesser's Where's Charley? Rapidly outgrowing the wearisome ingenues assigned her by the studio, Allyn temporarily retired in 1954. Resuming her acting, singing and dancing lessons in the mid-1960s, Allyn slowly reemerged as a versatile character actress, popping up in such small but powerful roles as Red Buttons' psychotic dance partner in They Shoot Horses, Don't They (1969) and the "wrong" White House source in All the President's Men (1976). On TV, she played spinsterish secretary Janet Reubner on The Tony Randall Show (1976-78), while on the 1987 critic's darling Days and Nights of Molly Dodd she portrayed Molly's divorced mother. Allyn Ann McLerie has been married twice, to actor/playwright/lyricist Adolph Green and to Broadway leading man George Gaynes.

Trivia: Murray Hamilton first stepped on a Broadway stage in 1945; among his subsequent theatrical credits was the original production of Mister Roberts and his Tony-winning stint in 1964's Absence of a Cello. Hamilton's film career began with a minor role in Bright Victory (1951). He often played abrasive, cynical characters, such as the "feller sufferin' from R.O.T.C" in 1958's No Time for Sergeants, but he occasionally essayed good-guy roles, notably as James Stewart's foredoomed partner in The FBI Story (1959). Murray Hamilton is best known to many moviegoers for his role as the bombastic mayor in 1975's Jaws, a role which he won, according to the film's scenarist Carl Gottlieb, thanks to his acute ability "to portray weakness disguised as strength."

Trivia: If character actor Herb Edelman was one of the more successful stage and screen purveyors of "Everyman" roles, it was probably because he'd held down an astonishing array of meat-and-potato jobs before settling into acting. Edelman studied to be a veterinarian at Cornell University, but left during the first year. He took a tentative stab at journalism before toiling as an Armed Forces radio operator and announcer. While stationed in the Far East, Edelman entertained the notion of becoming a "Jewish Buddhist." He returned to his hometown to attend Brooklyn College, dropped out to become a hotel manager, was briefly the "straight" half of a comedy team, worked in advertising, drove a hack, and dropped back into college. Finally turning to acting full time in summer stock, Edelman began picking up small roles in New York productions, including the scene-stealing exhausted delivery man inNeil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1965), a role he recreated for the 1967 film version. Forming strong bonds with both Simon and with Barefoot star Robert Redford, Edelman would later appear in Simon's The Odd Couple and California Suite, and in the Redford/Barbara Streisand vehicle The Way We Were (1973). In 1968, Edelman co-starred with Bob Denver in the two-season TV sitcom The Good Guys. Nine years later, he starred as one-half of the title role in the weekly TV comedy/fantasy Big John, Little John (Robbie Rist was the "Little" one). Other TV series featuring Herb Edelman on a regular or recurring basis included Ladies Man, 9 to 5, Strike Force and Murder She Wrote. Fans of the sitcom The Golden Girls may remember Edelman for playing Stanley, Bea Arthur's irksome ex-husband. Edelman died of emphysema at the Motion Picture Hospital in Los Angeles on July 21, 1996; he was 62.

Trivia: A former member of Andy Warhol's Factory and an active member in 1960s New York avant-garde theater, actress Sally Kirkland is best remembered in film for playing a famous Czech actress who is forced to lead a degrading life of anonymity in New York in Anna (1987). The daughter of a fashion editor of Life magazine and a wealthy scrap iron vendor, the tall, slender Kirkland started out as a Vogue model and then studied at the Actor's Studio with Lee Strassberg and Uta Hagen. She launched her acting career off-Broadway, but didn't make much impact until she appeared nude and tied to a chair for 45 minutes in the drama Sweet Eros. By 1964, Kirkland was deeply involved in the Big Apple's avant-garde movement and was also an active drug user until an attempted suicide frightened her into cleaning up her life through yoga and painting. As an actress, she next involved herself with Warhol's clique, appearing in several underground films, notably The Thirteen Most Beautiful Women. Though much of her subsequent film appearances have been in low-budget and exploitation films, Kirkland has had a few shining moments as a supporting actress in such movies as The Sting (1973) and Private Benjamin (1980). For her work in Anna, Kirkland received an Academy Award nomination. In addition to her acting career, Kirkland is a minister of the New Age Church of the Movement of Inner Spiritual Awareness.

Trivia: The daughter of actress Freda Jones, dark-eyed, sad-faced child performer Marcia Mae Jones was an infant when she made her screen bow in Mannequin (1926). There was always an air of tragedy about Marcia Mae; more often than not she played cripples or consumptives who didn't survive past reel five. She was at her best as the terror-stricken Rosalie, the virtual slave of vitriolic Bonita Granville, in These Three (1936). She also proved a good, realistic "opposite" to sweetness'n'light Shirley Temple in Heidi (1937) and A Little Princess. In the 1940s, Jones played grown-up leads in several Monogram and PRC films; she was always worth watching, even when he films were barely tolerable. Latterly billed as Marsha Jones, the actress continued appearing in supporting and minor roles in TV and films until the early 1970s.

Trivia: Pennsylvania-born actor Don Keefer enjoyed a 60-year-plus career on stage and screen that saw him range freely across character parts and leading roles in both fields. An actor from his youth, he started early playing leads, portraying the title role in The Adventures of Marco Polo for a production of the Child Study Association. He won the Clarence Derwent Award for his early work on Broadway, and spent his early career working alongside the likes of Ethel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, and José Ferrer, and under such directors as Moss Hart, Elia Kazan, and Margaret Webster (including the famed production of Othello starring Paul Robeson). Keefer was a charter member of the Actors' Studio, and originated the role of Bernard, the studious neighbor son-turned-lawyer in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He was the only actor to remain with the production for its entire Broadway run, and subsequently made his screen debut in 1951 in the movie adaptation of the play produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Laslo Benedek. From that beginning, he went on to appear in more than 130 movie and television productions, in between theatrical work on both coasts (including a stint at the Theatre Group at UCLA under John Houseman). Highlights of his stage career include a highly acclaimed touring production of Anton Chekhov: The Human Comedy, focusing on the lighter side of Chekhov's work. On screen as on stage, Keefer played a wide variety of parts -- he made a fine villain-turned-neutral in "Winchester Quarantine," an early (and very powerful) episode of Have Gun Will Travel, but was equally good as Ensign Twitchell, the comically (yet tragically) over-eager and officious junior officer in Joseph Pevney's Away All Boats, during this same period. Don Keefer was still working in the late '90s, in movies such as Liar Liar and an episode of Profiler. But amid hundreds of portrayals, Keefer's single most memorable role for most viewers -- other than Bernard in Death of a Salesman -- is almost certainly that of Dan Hollis, the doomed neighbor whose birthday celebration comes to a hideous end (his head popping out of a giant jack-in-the-box) in the 1961 Twilight Zone show "It's a Good Life."

Trivia: Finnish-born actor George Gaynes was a United States citizen for most of his life. Blessed with a superb singing voice and an amiable stage presence, Gaynes rapidly built a reputation as a Broadway musical comedy performer in the '40s and '50s (his best-known appearance was in Wonderful Town, the musical version of My Sister Eileen). Entering films and television in the early 1960s, Gaynes was a regular on the TV daytime dramas Search for Tomorrow and General Hospital, and showed up in such movies as The Group (1968), Marooned (1969) and Doctor's Wives (1971). He was terrific in Dustin Hoffman's Tootsie (1981) as the aging, libidinous soap opera actor who tries to put the make on his co-star "Dorothy Michaels," little suspecting that Dorothy is really the certifiably male Michael Dorsey (Hoffman). In 1984, Gaynes was showcased on two different series, one on TV, the other on the big screen. The TV series was Punky Brewster, wherein Gaynes played photographer Henry Warnimont, the adult guardian of the title character (a little lost girl, played by Soleil Moon Frye); when Punky Brewster was spun off into a cartoon series, Gaynes came along as one of the voice talents. The aforementioned big-screen series was launched with Police Academy (1984), a juvenile comedy that somehow spawned five sequels, all of them featuring Gaynes as long-suffering police chief Lassard. None of his subsequent appearances drew as many laughs as did George Gaynes' setpiece in the first film, in which, while trying to deliver a public speech, he was the unwitting (but increasingly ecstatic) recipient of a prostitute's services. Gaynes appeared in all seven films in the series; he also appeared in films like The Cruicible and Wag the Dog. Gaynes died in 2016, at age 98.

Trivia: American actor Eric Boles played supporting roles and worked as an assistant director during the 1970s.

Trivia: One of Hollywood's most intense supporting and leading actors, James Woods has built a distinguished career on stage, screen, and television. Early in his career, Woods, with his lean body, close-set eyes, and narrow, acne-scarred face, specialized in playing sociopaths, psychopaths, and other crazed villains, but in the 1990s, he added a sizable number of good guys to his resumé.The son of a military man, Woods was born in Vermal, UT, on April 14, 1947. Thanks to his father's job, he had a peripatetic childhood, living in four states and on the island of Guam. As a young man, he earned a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; after obtaining a degree in political science, he set out to become a professional actor in New York. While in school he had appeared in numerous plays at M.I.T., Harvard, and with the Theater Company of Boston, as well as at the Provincetown Playhouse on Rhode Island. After working off-Broadway, Woods debuted on Broadway in 1970, appearing in Borstal Boy. Off-Broadway, he earned an Obie for his work in Saved.In 1971, the actor made his first television appearance in All the Way Home, and the year after that debuted in Elia Kazan's thriller The Visitors (1972). He then played a small part in The Way We Were (1973), but did not become a star until he played a vicious, remorseless cop killer in The Onion Field (1979). Subsequent film appearances quickly established Woods as a scene stealer, and though not among Tinseltown's most handsome actors, he developed a base of devoted female fans who found his rugged, ruthless appearance sexy. This appearance would serve him well throughout his career, notably in one of his first major films, David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983). Cast as the film's morally ambiguous hero, Woods gave a brilliantly intense performance that was further enhanced by his rough-hewn physical attributes. Throughout the 1980s, Woods continued to turn in one solid performance after another, earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of an American journalist in South America in Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986). He gave another remarkable performance as a Jewish gangster in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984), and in 1989 tried his hand at playing nice in the adoption drama Immediate Family. That same year, he won an Emmy for his portrayal of Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson in My Name Is Bill W. After beginning the subsequent decade with an Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated performance in the title role of the made-for-TV Citizen Cohn (1992), Woods appeared in a diverse series of films, playing a boxing promoter in Diggstown (1992), H.R. Haldeman in Nixon (1995), a drug dealer in Another Day in Paradise (1998), and a vampire slayer in John Carpenter's Vampires. In 1996, he won his second Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Medger Evers' suspected assassin in Ghosts of Mississippi. In 1999, the actor continued to demonstrate his versatility in a number of high-profile films. For The General's Daughter, he played a shady colonel, while he appeared as a newspaper editor in Clint Eastwood's True Crime, the head of an emotionally disintegrating Michigan family in The Virgin Suicides, and a football team orthopedist in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday.As the 21st century began, Woods could be seen as a doctor in the medical/hostage thriller John Q., and he lent his voice to a number of documentaries and animated projects including the sequel Stuart Little 2. He was part of the ensemble in the Polish brothers' Northfork, and appeared in Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty. In 2007 he began work as the lead on the TV series Shark, and in 2011 he appeared in the remake of Straw Dogs and the well-reviewed made-for-HBO docudrama about the collapse of the American economy, Too Big to Fail.

Trivia: Actress Constance Forslund gained her first Broadway attention in the mid '70s revival of Clare Booth Luce's The Women. Though born in California, Constance spent her teen years in Wisconsin. In the '70s, '80s and '90s, she appeared regularly in TV movies and guest-star spots on various weekly series. Forslund could also be seen in such theatrical films as The Way We Were (1973), Hail to the Chief (1973) and The River's Edge (1985). The production that really, truly should have made Constance Forslund a star was This Year's Blonde, a 1980 TV-movie wherein the actress pulled out all the stops in the role of the young Marilyn Monroe.

Trivia: Actor Robert Gerringer played small roles in 10 films and spent time on a television soap opera, but he is best known for his stage work and has appeared in over 100 plays on and off-Broadway, most frequently opposite Patricia Falkenhain, his wife.

Trivia: Actress/model Susan Blakely, the daughter of a U.S. Army colonel, was born in Germany and raised in ports of call ranging from Korea to Hawaii to Texas. After a year at the University of Texas, Blakely struck out for New York, where she studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse while pursuing a modeling career. By 1972, she was pulling down 100,000 dollars a year for her appearances on magazine covers and TV advertisements; she also began showing up in bit parts in films like Savages (1972) and The Way We Were (1973). Larger roles came her way in The Lords of Flatbush (1974), Report to the Commissioner (1974), The Towering Inferno (1974), and Shampoo (1975). It was a television production that brought her full-fledged stardom: in 1977, Blakely appeared as Julie Prescott in the ratings-busting miniseries Rich Man Poor Man. She continued to flourish in TV movies into the 1990s, sinking her dazzling teeth into such meaty roles as Eva Braun in The Bunker (1981), Frances Farmer in Will There Really Be a Morning? (1982), and attorney Leslie Abramson in Honor Thy Father and Mother: The True Story of the Menendez Brothers (1994). Susan Blakely has been married to screenwriter Todd Merer and producer Steve Jaffe.

Trivia: Played Margo Horton on Days of Our Lives, the daughter-in-law of Dr. Bill Horton, who was played by real-life husband Edward Mallory. Appeared in the original unaired pilot for Three's Company as Samantha. Her character was later recast with Suzanne Somers as Chrissy Snow.

Trivia: Described bluntly as "yeccch" in a 1968 book on movie villains, porcine Dan Seymour has certainly played more than his share of slimy bad guys. Seymour started out as a nightclub comedian, then decided to give movies a try. He was almost immediately cast in heavy roles due to his girth and sinister features. Seymour's career has in many ways been inextricably linked with the 1942 classic Casablanca. He played the small role of Abdul the doorman in that film, went on to a larger part in Warners' Casablanca clone To Have and Have Not (1944), graduated to chief of police in the Marx Brothers spoof A Night in Casablanca (1946), and, coming full circle, was cast in the old Sidney Greenstreet role of Ferrari in Warners' weekly TV series version of Casablanca in 1955. Dan Seymour continued to play small roles in films like The Way We Were into the 1970s, and was frequently seen on TV comedy series of the same era, usually cast as a self-indulgent Middle Eastern potentate.